Easing healthcare information management

THE Faculty of Computing and Informatics (FCI) at the Na­mibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), in collaboration with Azusa Pacific University (APU), in the United States, have embarked on an initiative titled the Namibia Health Informatics Project (NHIP).
The project is expected to run until 2020.
The aim of the project is to research and develop a health information sys­tem that will transform the healthcare paper-based medical records to an electronic format.Additionally, the aim is to promote interoperability amongst in Namibia.
It is hoped that this will pro­mote effectiveness in service de­livery.
FCI lecturer Suama Hamunye­la further highlighted the impor­tance of the NHIP.
“Healthcare information man­agement challenges are common all over the world and we at the FCI realise that this has a severe negative impact on the planning efforts of stakeholders which ul­timately affects services delivery. Together with our partners at APU, we decided to bring our ex­pertise together and make a dif­ference,” she said.
“There have not been any vis­its to hospitals, but so far, the 31 students and staff from both uni­versities involved in the project, worked on a prototype system which is solely based on intuition and experience,” Hamunyela re­marked.
The team is made up of strong software engineers, designers, and communicators who have gathered under a unified vision to spark a change in Namibia’s healthcare system.
Among other areas the team identified as significant is the in­clusion of functions to support­ing health-related data analytics. This is set to assist with warnings with regards to possible epidem­ics, allocation of resources across the country, amongst others. Since the project is locally based and largely involves local students and advisers, the project will be customised to suit the Namibian context.
The groundwork for the project began last year.